Danger wrote:I'm not sure if you're actually being serious about the question but by weapon did you mean the big robot? I believe he was a Decepticon, Starscream.

Yeah, I'm being serious. The first decepticon tore through a heavily armed military base without a problem, and yet later in the movie, a band of 5-7 soldiers is able to hold them off at close range with hand-held weapons.

Why didn't the decepticons just emit that round blast that wiped out the base?

I didn't remember the decepiticon wiping out the base in one shot but I believe when they fought that scorpion thing in the desert and retrieved part of his tail they realized they actually did damage to it. They isolated it down to some specific bullet/cartridge/chemical mixture or whatever that hurt the scorpion and loaded it in all their weapons. They also mentioned that the chest area contained the least protection so they focused fire on that part. Bumblebee was also shooting at the decepticon too so I don't think it was just the soldiers that did all the damage.

Danger wrote:I didn't remember the decepiticon wiping out the base in one shot but I believe when they fought that scorpion thing in the desert and retrieved part of his tail they realized they actually did damage to it. They isolated it down to some specific bullet/cartridge/chemical mixture or whatever that hurt the scorpion and loaded it in all their weapons. They also mentioned that the chest area contained the least protection so they focused fire on that part. Bumblebee was also shooting at the decepticon too so I don't think it was just the soldiers that did all the damage.

You're right. He didn't wipe out the base in one shot, but he annihilated everything within at least 100 feet with one blast, and he was able to repeatedly keep blasting. At close quarters, even with humans armed with high-heat rounds, and even with an Autobot in front of him, one or two blasts of that weapon should have been more than plenty to finish the battle quickly.

And about the stupid scorpion... Why did it just stand still while it was being attacked? It was ducking and dodging through the sand for 90% of the time it was trailing them, and then I'm supposed to believe it thought a head-to-head confrontation with it above the surface was a better idea than moving through the sand and picking off the humans one-by-one just like it did to the white guy that wore glasses?

Danger wrote:I didn't remember the decepiticon wiping out the base in one shot but I believe when they fought that scorpion thing in the desert and retrieved part of his tail they realized they actually did damage to it. They isolated it down to some specific bullet/cartridge/chemical mixture or whatever that hurt the scorpion and loaded it in all their weapons. They also mentioned that the chest area contained the least protection so they focused fire on that part. Bumblebee was also shooting at the decepticon too so I don't think it was just the soldiers that did all the damage.

You're right. He didn't wipe out the base in one shot, but he annihilated everything within at least 100 feet with one blast, and he was able to repeatedly keep blasting. At close quarters, even with humans armed with high-heat rounds, and even with an Autobot in front of him, one or two blasts of that weapon should have been more than plenty to finish the battle quickly.

And about the stupid scorpion... Why did it just stand still while it was being attacked? It was ducking and dodging through the sand for 90% of the time it was trailing them, and then I'm supposed to believe it thought a head-to-head confrontation with it above the surface was a better idea than moving through the sand and picking off the humans one-by-one just like it did to the white guy that wore glasses?

Well not everything in the movie necessarily makes sense but I guess I'll try to take a stand and try to explain the logic that went into this.

Yah I remember the big shots that wiped out everything but regarding why they didn't use it towards the end I would assume they either had fellow decepticons on the ground and didn't want to harm them or they didn't want to lose sight of the cube that was already on the ground. And I don't remember how exactly that blast went but if it was fired at close quarters I'm pretty sure the decepticon itself would've been injured by the blast. And I think that a tank can withstand the blast (to a certain degree), I think they were hiding behind a row of tanks when they were shooting at it during the fight scene in the military base and that's how they survived.

Regarding the scorpion, I don't even remember why it was chasing them. But I think they wanted those binocular things that the soldier took a picture of the decepticon with. It also clearly could do more damage above ground with its machine guns and I think this battle would be the 2nd battle after the military base. If I were the decepitcon, and saw a fellow decepticon completely owned up a whole military base without a scratch I sure would be cocky enough to come up above ground against a few soldiers and some Iraqis with AK's. It probably didn't anticipate any of the military weapons actually harming it, let alone an air strike.